Vexations
When I first began to sing this song, I was inspired by feelings of love and beauty. But this song has continued long past its inspiration; I have been singing, continuously, for many years now, and my inspiration was — as it turned out — only momentary. This song is so familiar I can sing it somewhat automatically, while I accomplish other tasks such as eating, washing, and obviously writing this page. But what I cannot do is sing another song. I have been told that there are Tibetan monks who are able to sing two tunes simultaneously, but these monks must not sing a song such as I have been singing all these years. It takes the whole voice to sing this song; the mind can wander momentarily — it is remarkable how much can be accomplished in a moment — however the voice must be concentrated, indeed the whole body must participate to some degree. This is because this song is sung at top volume. It must be extremely loud. This was an aspect of my initial inspiration, and I will never compromise that vision. It is a song that — for all its other defects, which I now know all too well — is incomparably, magnificently loud. I believe that it may be the loudest song ever composed, and if I am not the loudest singer who ever lived, I must rank fairly high among those that have gone before, as I have never met a louder singer in my lifetime. Some contend that it is difficult to compare, because other singers claim it is impossible to perform in my presence. They say that this is because of my continuous singing, but I believe it is simply egotism, a common fault of singers. It may be that I am typical in this regard. But my song, and its volume, are anything but typical. About this song: it is very simple, however it expresses all that I have just said. It also expresses my desire for it to end. But it is perpetual. I will die before this song ends, and then it will carry on without me — still at a deafening volume. There is no other way for this song to be sung.
Bells
Your ears are ringing; the tone is C#; the rain is falling. There are motors whirring everywhere, in the computer on which you type these thoughts; in the clock by the bed on which you read this page; in the bulb of the lamp with the halogen light, so compact and yet so much louder than light sources many thousands and millions times its size: the sun, for example. Which is not shining, or ringing, at the moment, but somewhere exploding in sight of a telescope which does not measure light but rather changes in the radio waves — buzzing — that everywhere envelop us.
There is no end to the ringing which began with the background radiation of the cosmos, which was at one time silent to you, but then rushed into your ears like salt water, pushing insistently and painfully against the small space beside your eardrum, broadcasting its confused message out for anyone capable of understanding it to receive: two people, one male and one female, holding hands, the man gesturing with his other arm as if to say hello, but who knows what one upraised hand might mean? You would have rather placed that hand cupped to one ear, listening, as if you didn’t hear enough already, to other messages broadcast across the skies.
Which are shrill with airplanes, helicopters, office towers packed with air conditioners and topped by enormous weights and pulleys for elevators, and then higher up satellites, space stations, and colliding junk, not to mention asteroids, dust, and the shaking harmony of the spheres themselves.
No dream was ever so noisy as this, which wakes you breathless from sleep; it’s the familiar dream of bees swarming across a field, you see the field in daylight yet the scene is dark, lit by the half-light of the midnight sun. Bees swarm around your head, singing a song of only one note — C# — which you recognize as the last note anyone will hear, because the world is running out of air, and air conveys sound. The bees are ignorant of the silence they violate. Then the field is in true darkness, the bees are gone, there is no sound except the memory of their sound, the same C# which is quiet but incessant. No one else will ever hear it, there is no more air and the sound is locked inside your head, impossible to release by speaking or singing or even pounding the ground or trees or whistling through grass.
The memory of this dream is locked inside you, as is the dream itself. The sound of both is one whining note, could it be the same note that Cicero described in the Somnium Scipionis? Do you dream in tempered tones? Is your pitch secure, even when asleep? Or only when asleep?
Experience of singing is for you an auditory one, you have never sung aloud. You cannot remember doing so, at least. Singing while asleep is possible, even beautiful, the pitch is perfect and breathing effortless. Nevertheless no sound emerges during such performances. The breath you exhale is suspended, little bubbles escape as from a swimmer but there is no room for air, the space inside is completely full with nothing, and motionless. When you wake, breathing is normal but awkward. Your throat is scratchy as if from yelling. Glycerin is useful in lubricating your unused vocal chords. You have been under water a long time.
A Misunderstanding
Not wanting to be misunderstood, Cain never spoke again. These words, being unpronounced, were therefore the holiest of all the words of the ancient fathers. His people multiplied in silence. In their villages nothing was said. Ultimately the tribe of Cain lost the ability to speak, as knowledge of language disappeared over time. Much later, a young generation began to make noises. Not speech, but grunts or groans. Also high-pitched shrieks. A neighboring tribe was drawn to the sounds, and discovered there a pack of animals they had never before seen. Unsure of their origin, the neighboring tribe debated as to whether these creatures were divine or demonic. They argued for days. At last the wisest man in the tribe declared that divine or demonic, these creatures were dangerous. Their intent could not be understood. And so the neighboring tribe slaughtered the tribe of Cain, erasing their bodies from the Earth just as their language had long ago disappeared, completing the punishment God had chosen for them in the time of the ancient fathers; and condemning themselves to the same future fate.
The Envelope
The envelope was an unprecedented invention; for in those days nothing was hidden from view, the occult was as yet unborn, even metaphors of obstruction and enclosure were unknown. It is true that people wore clothes, but they did not carry wallets — and the letters they wrote were transported by hand, out in the open, from place to place.
A room with doors was considered uncomfortable, not bad luck because, as has already been suggested, luck had then only a positive connotation. The ear was considered the organ closest to the seat of emotion, representing the openness of the body to the influences of the world. To have an occluded ear, or to be hard of hearing, was considered the greatest handicap.
When people wrote letters, they sat at desks without drawers, before windows without curtains. These letters were not the sorts of direct personal address with which we are now familiar. They were, as befitted their different material existence, open addresses to the society at large. The author of a letter would just as soon hand it to an unfamiliar party as deliver it to someone he or she knew. This ambiguity of recipient caused the author no consternation during the letter’s composition.
Eventually letters came to be published for all to read at once. These books of letters had no covers, nor were they “bound” in the sense we would use the word today. Their exact form is difficult for us to picture concretely. However we know they were read, alone or in groups, in both private and public settings, not least of which were the baths.
This was the world into which the inventor of the envelope was born. The delivery, legend tells us, was witnessed only by the mother. Out of her womb came the entire amniotic sac, unbroken, opaque but with a definite form within. The alarmed woman raised the sac to the light, transfixed by a series of mysterious emblems in the blood vessels of the enclosure.
Reading
Opening a book, at random. This book, if it so happens, but the likelihood is small. Because of all readers, how many will ever read a particular book. And then, of all particular books, how often might one choose the one being written. Perhaps in the stars a knowledgeable person could foresee, or at least explain the likelihood. A perfect problem for the stars, of reconciling the universe (readers) with the internal (writing). Or it could be rephrased: reconciling the public with the private. But now we’ve asserted that writing is private, which, by immediately associating it with reading, we had already contradicted. Writing is public. Reading is private. And thus this book, having been written in public, is being read in private. Unless you are reading in a public place, but that is beside the point. Isn’t it? Because in your public place you are being private, reading. Or you are reading aloud. But what is the likelihood of that. Very little. Reading aloud is a confusion of the private (reading) with the public (aloud), another problem for the stars; or more accurately, a problem only to be solved by those with the right strengths and weaknesses in their charts. For the rest it is an embarrassment. Where you are doesn’t matter. That is the point. That is why the stars can answer literary questions. This is an oblique point, but its chance of being true is none the less for it. Of all statements, most have the same likelihood of being true. Even the most outrageous statements of fact — all is made of water, for example — have a good chance of being true. Why then is it so hard to write the truth? It is not hard to read the truth. In fact it is a pleasure. But writing it is painful and perhaps impossible. It should follow that reading the truth is likewise impossible, except that one can read falsehoods and take them as truth. Reading is a transformative process. Writing is not. The writer is unchanged from the start of a book to the finish. Even Augustine, saved before he starts his account of sin. But reading? The reader is always different at the end of the book than at the beginning. The reader is changing constantly. The writer is reactionary. And perhaps this is the reason why a given book has only the slimmest chance of being opened at any particular time. Because the book never changes, and the reader constantly does. Time, which of course always changes, it is the tritest of statements to write, is the reader’s element. And the writer is uncomfortable with time, the writer’s book is uncomfortable with time, everything the writer does indicates the writer’s discomfort with time. But the reader? If a book has a reader, as this one now does, it is manipulated in time by that reader, as if it didn’t have any other existence. Which it doesn’t, as a work being read. As a work having been written, it is an artifact of the past. As anything else, only the reader might say. What do you say? Of course you cannot tell the writer. Long gone, the writer. Or at some unreachable distance. Or, worse yet, if you are to meet the writer, completely uninterested in learning what you have to say, and even more repulsive, uninteresting himself. Most are egotistical and boring, to boot. Clichés and self-importance, those are the writer’s elements. And self-pity. And a consuming ambition to write. Even to write what isn’t necessary. Because what is necessary? The truth. And no one writes the truth. The writer writes drivel and falsehoods, and the reader reads beauty and truth. Do you not? Perhaps some readers read ugliness and lies. But how would one read ugliness and lies? As truth. That is the point already made. Writers are repetitious and self-referential. This is because they have nothing to write. It is likely that you have already gathered that. You read that truth long ago in the lies that you were presented. Long ago in this book (which is not yet long, but you have no reason to think it won’t be, like all other books, too long) or long ago in your reading of other books. This cannot be the first book you have ever read. If so, this is an absurd situation. Of all possible readers, reading all possible books, the likelihood that this book is being read at all is slim, and the likelihood of it being read as the reader’s first book ever is even slimmer, if not outright impossible. Because readers begin with books that pretend to tell the truth, but are full of lies. Fairy tales, stories for children, all filled with self-conscious lies but presented as the truth. Here you have a different case, one to be encountered only later, after having read a number of books. This is the case of a book telling lies and only lies. No pretense to truth. You however will read some truth into this. But the writer cannot know for sure. Perhaps, at some distance in time or space or merely psychic distance introduced by the character of one who reads, and perhaps also writes, but who is at this moment primarily a reader not a writer, this book will be read for what it is, which is lies. And then perhaps reading will be something other than predicted here. However that would confirm that this book tells lies, or at least falsehoods. This is the sort of repulsive self-reflexivity that is typical of writing. And books are useless for this reason. Useless to anyone but readers.
In Private
It is necessary to write this because I have forgotten who I am. I can look in the mirror, but that only reacquaints me with my image; it is the same with photographs. I have spoken and sung into a tape recorder, and have heard my voice. I have looked through all my papers, and rediscovered my social history. I can remember all the details of my personal life. But my private thoughts I cannot recall.
It is possible that I have never had any private thoughts. However, in that case I do not know why I suddenly feel that I should have them.
Therefore I am writing to conjure my private thoughts, or at least to establish why I feel they are missing.
It is also possible that I have had private thoughts before, and written them down, and lost them. That would account both for their absence and my familiarity with their existence. In this case I am perhaps now beginning to reconstruct them. The first private thought, it seems, would be the need for private thoughts.
That might explain this page of writing. But what would a second private thought be?
I now realize that I have written this page before. I have written this page thousands of times, and thrown it away. That is why it was not among my personal papers. I have had this one private thought all my life — that I have no private thoughts — and written it down time and again, hoping it would lead to another. But it never does.
After the Tempest
An opera would be a good sequel, primarily because the dramatic problems of a sequel are avoided by the undramatic form of aria, aria, aria: all lyric. But the story becomes a simple comedy — Prospero, the worried father, marries off his daughter and the final chorus is sung by all. The book is drowned, but in rhyme. No mention of a staff.
Sleep
It is now known that the best measure of life is not years and months and days, but cumulative hours of sleep. Each body is granted a finite amount of sleep, which may be divided in any manner. Those craving more life have taken outrageous measures to remain awake, but such behavior seems to rarely, if ever, prolong a body’s age beyond the old average expectations. More successful have been those craving death, an ever-larger group of dedicated sleepers who consider each waking hour time wasted, and time asleep as bliss, both peace and progress. There is a religious fervor to these sleepers, who chant themselves to sleep with monotonous prayers of time’s end. There are, finally, the sensualist sleepers, who savor each moment asleep like sips from a precious bottle of wine. Unappreciated minutes of sleep are to them an unthinkable waste, and dreams are valued as incomparable visions of truth. It is these sleepers, wreathed in incense, wrapped in silk pajamas, and cultivating exotic herbal, alcoholic, and pharmacological practices to better stimulate their attentive moments of unconsciousness, who will write the history of sleeping life. They are after all the only ones who still allow themselves to read — a dangerously soporific activity for those who never want to sleep, and a pointless one for those who do.
Read Me
One of the problems with death, for the intellectual classes, is that it leaves so many unfiled and perhaps unwanted papers in its wake. I carefully arranged all my papers — destroying those I do not want to survive me, organizing for a stranger’s eye all others — and thus prepared to die, at least from an organizational point of view. However I continued to live, generating more papers, which threatened to survive me in a form I had not prepared. Therefore I have now made final arrangements, and will live my remaining days without paper or pencil. It may be that I die for lack of a writing implement — if I need to send an urgent message to someone for help, for example — but this statement will remain the last in my file, the first to greet the executors. For all they know, I am still alive. If so, it is however a paperless existence, and therefore moot in terms of my legacy.
To Levitate
Waking up in complete darkness (hotel bed in an alcove), I remembered that — as a child — I had the power to levitate. Now the ability came to me in a dream when, for various reasons, I needed to leap across a body of water. Suddenly I remembered the key to my abilities: focus on the arrival of my feet on the ground just ahead, constantly moving that point forward, thereby prolonging my step indefinitely. Never concentrate on the levitation. Just the step that doesn’t end.
When did I lose my ability to levitate? Between my parents’ arms, leaning on them as I moved my feet over the ground without touching. On an escalator in a department store, lifting myself above the treads. In an airport on a moving sidewalk, floating above the ground that stood still.
Now the crocodiles and menacing sea lions of a mountain resort threaten my biologist friend and myself. It is true that forgotten powers reawaken when necessary. The mountains are themselves forbidding, which I tell my friend. Her lack of fear inspires my endless leap. Thank you friend! And the monsters are so disappointed, I see it in their eyes.
Mildred Pierce
What happened was that as Mildred’s expanded, the food we were asked to eat was just too much, too fast. At first it was a pleasure; the fried chicken, in particular. We sat at checkered tablecloths and were careful not to spill the gravy or make crumbs — the set dressers were vigilant, and among the meanest people at the studio. The coffee was good, too, very hot, but we were not permitted to blow on it because this action distended our cheeks, and consequently many burned their mouths, without grimacing of course.
But the plot called for more Mildred’s, more chicken, more scalding coffee, and also those mile-high cream pies, the kind no one makes anymore, as if they were prohibited. Why not make a pie so tall it cannot fit anywhere but a Hollywood set? But even the pies began to wear on us. The variety helped — pumpkin, apple, and the myriad creams: pineapple, banana, lemon chiffon — however many of us began to fall ill. Those who fell sick nonetheless showed up for work, because work was not plentiful, and in addition to our wages we were eating well; but the eating was difficult enough without feeling sick.
Then we had to travel, to the Mildred’s at Laguna Beach, to the many Mildred’s in the booming Valley — often in one day, at one meal even. The script would call for chickens down south and pie back north. The choice assignment was Beverly Hills, but soon they stopped serving food there altogether and used it only for the office scenes. While Mildred was working in Beverly Hills, we were eating everywhere else, keeping the money flowing, the business booming. The plot necessities were clear, but none of us could see how it could last.
And it didn’t last. Not enough mouths, not enough chicken, not enough pie to pay for all the costs associated with the now ubiquitous Mildred’s. An entire population was eating, but it wasn’t enough. It would take the end of the war, returning soldiers, big new families, to eat all the food this plot required. Before that could happen they killed off the principals, closed the set, put us out of work. Then we missed the chicken and coffee. I remember arguments about which Mildred’s had been the best, which pie, which gravy with the fried chicken. These were long, impassioned bouts of nostalgia for a set the likes of which we would never see again, food we could only recall in black and white, that looked so good we could never be sure we had ever really tasted it.
The Extra
At a certain point in life one ceases to be oneself, and from that moment forward one chooses one’s own personality, which is necessarily someone else’s. This is not a moment to be sanguine about one’s past. It is, rather, a moment when one must focus all one’s energies on the question at hand, and make the right decision.
In my new role as extra, I have no role at all, but only a presence. My character may be someone else’s, but without a character of my own there is no way to distinguish between them. The lie of my being may therefore be avoided: truth is possible, in the absence of substance.
The extra was seen in the background, maybe acting badly. But in the foreground was the deception, the big lie. The background is only a set piece, a hint of time and place. Flats lifted away and stored after the performance. Scrims hoisted dramatically into the flies…
When Hart Crane jumped into the painting of the sea, he did indeed drown. Extras jump and jump and jump, and never fall more than a few feet, into bales of hay. The hay is scratchy, and its smell is of the barnyard. Extras are rolling in it.
The Secret Museum
The horn on the Victrola looked inviting, so I jumped inside. It was cool, and smooth to the touch. I fell, but slowly, and so I was not afraid. I became very small; I believe the force of my fall influenced my shape, which began to conform to the inside of the horn. Eventually I became a single point. And I entered the groove of a record, which launched me as pure sound. A vibration. I carry no melody, not even a note. My transfiguring moment fell between beats, and so I am an aspect of that atmospheric scratch in the background. Before me, and after me, came the most beautiful trumpet solo.
Hearts and Pearls
(or, The Lounge Lizard’s Lost Love)
What seemed obvious on arrival is now obscure and giving me a headache. The dialogue cards call for tender words. But tenderness, what is tenderness, and what tenderness can I hope to speak while falling from a height into a bank of snow? I might as well put guitars on my feet and clomp around, as attempt to sing. I might as well walk through snow with guitars on my feet, as sing.
Where sharpshooters plot devilish crimes, there I’ll be, tucked in a corner, scribbling away at some poorly conceived attempt at exposé. Knock me on the head, why don’t you, while I try to write this. Or walk through the room dressed like that, it’s the same thing. Give me odds; I’ll take a shot at myself too.
When we finally get together, I’ll whisk you away to a mail-order house, we can both work in shipping and tangle up the wires. I could make breakfast at the bottom of the sea for you. I could swim through the aisles. I could float like an anchor.
What love is, I suspect, comes in these numbered boxes. But it is as if they have been reordered, all my feelings come out wrong, or rather in the wrong sequence. My proposal, finally, is unpacked, but you left long ago when the trial separation interrupted the honeymoon. You have been back, it is true, at holidays. And hasn’t my cooking improved, now that the stove has been moved indoors?
Nothing mocks success like more of it. I could somersault I am so happy. But I am so sad I turn cartwheels straight off a cliff.
Caresse Crosby Dreams a Dream
My daughters at my side dressed in pinafores. The man just off the Lusitania at the dock, poem in hand: “We will sew our lips together…”
Let me present an opium vision, a memory from that room with four bathtubs, the view over the Seine and me, naked, illuminated to a cheering Bateau-Mouche. In the dream one says yes or no, and I choose yes. So we were married in an Inca ceremony officiated by a student sculptor who suffocated us in wet clay. What choice is left me? What instruction or command?
I try to follow my deceased companion. His taxi is too quick and the driver makes rude gestures at the passers-by.
At the hotel it is none too romantic, though management has thoughtfully neglected to remove the previous occupants’ caviar tins. They are blue and black and intricately stamped with impressions of fish scales. I contemplate my journey in the mirror. My relatives in Boston telegram for my arrest. Later that evening, back on Beacon Hill, the guests shiver at my negligée, carved in champagne ice. Who asked whom, I toss off, wet feet on carpet making my bobbed hair stand on end. Fear is a poem I burned, wrapping its ashes in silk, and ate like meringue.
Ghosts
Six ghosts were in my house last night. They sat smoking in a corner, speaking their strange language, occasionally translating the best jokes for me. They opened the windows, but smoked so much I thought I would choke. I emptied ashtray after ashtray, and they smoked and smoked.
Later, they played music — but so loud! The tallest one, in white robes, sang, and ground a screeching hurdy-gurdy. The strongest played the drums, like he would kill them; he had been tattooed from head to foot by the one who played bass, who was also tattooed, with crosses and other, unfamiliar signs. One stood very still, and made strangling sounds with his guitar. Another tapped little bells, and stared at the sky as if in prayer. And one just danced about, shrieking and shaking a soundless tambourine.
These ghosts are my friends. They stayed in my house another night. It was difficult having six smoking ghosts in my house, but when they left, I told them: next time, please bring more.
Mise en abyme
I was overwhelmed by the size and variety of the world, and resolved to limit my interests to myself. However my self turned out to be more various than I had hoped. My history, for example, does not begin with my birth, or even my parents’ births, but leaks out into an endless tree of personalities, cultures, and events. This is only considering the few generations I can trace. Beyond these I can only conjecture; an effort that requires the stockpiling of tremendous amounts of information.
Geography is likewise problematic. The street on which I was born, for example, has had many occupants, both commercial and residential. Researching a simple list of these occupants has proven to be a task worthy of years’ labor. And obviously this is only one street, I have walked on many streets in my day.
Which brings me to the paradox of this self-interested hobby. Each day I add to the events which need examination. Completion is impossible, for — to take the most extreme but perhaps most telling example — even the moment of completion would require its own notation, and that moment further notation, etcetera.
It is clear from my failures that the self is not an appropriate subject for study. (This is the only conclusion I can draw from a lifetime of self-examination.)
When I met Lewis Carroll he said to me, “As a fact, suicide is not interesting. But as a theory, it invites consideration of an ancient figure: the serpent swallowing its tail. A person ridding the world of him or herself is an infinite regression, and any act that partakes of the infinite is a candidate for the spiritual, the godly, for perfection.”
Only One Thing Is Missing
We are a mysterious island, whose contours must be mapped and named, resources catalogued and exploited, animals captured and domesticated; whose rivers must be bridged, harbors secured, and caverns explored; wool carded, oysters seeded, herbs collected; lakes lowered (by dynamite) and raised again (by means of a dam); ropes woven, ladders constructed, lifts contrived; apes befriended, servants trained; …and at whose core there exists some power, whose presence is made known only in times of danger, and whose purpose is the preservation of this island and its hierarchy of existence.
The Blue God
Nostalgic for a time of saints and mesmerists, I took up residence in Lynn, Massachusetts, near the house once occupied by Mary Baker Eddy. Lynn is the grimmest of towns, despite its location near the magnificent Massachusetts coastline. And it has always been the sort of awful place that attracts saints and mesmerists.
It was for this reason that I was not overly surprised to find the Blue God in Lynn. I saw him first in a photograph by Wallace Nutting, taken at a typically picturesque bend in a road, shaded by great chestnut trees. The photo, hand-colored, I found in a junk shop. Nutting’s photos are always hand-colored, but this one contained a speck of uncharacteristic blue. On closer inspection, I found a tiny figure underneath the chestnut trees, almost obscured by the brush overtaking some recently abandoned farmland…
I didn’t meet the Blue God until some time later. The photo is hanging over my desk as I write this. The blue figure has since faded from view, I do not know if it is because of the sunlight at my back or the presence of the God himself.
When we did meet, the Blue God was no longer blue. He had been in the sun, like the photo. It was a very still day, and I had wandered down to the ocean. As I stood at the shore, before a perfectly flat sea, I had the sensation that the water was solid. Nothing moved: there were no waves, or birds, or boats. In retrospect I have realized that I was witness to a rare moment of cosmological inertia. And suddenly he was there, striding along the beach. He was announcing, I now believe, the moment of rest.
When he was once again in the distance, precisely the size of the figure in the Nutting photo, I saw him turn to blue.
Meditation
Were one able to recall the precise moment one falls asleep, the thoughts revealed during that instant would produce complete peace, both for the singularly alert sleeper and the world at large; for the message hidden in that moment would, once revealed, be recognized instantly by every person as the very thought that has forever eluded their consciousness, and is ineluctably right.
In hopes of discovering this universally forgotten thought, I have stayed awake for fifty years, and what was once an exercise in meditation and self-abnegation that drove me to the brink of enlightenment has now become insomnia.
Nevertheless the continual occupation of this same spiritual ground that I once held so devoutly has, regardless of my increasing cynicism, deepened my understanding of the fact of spirituality, if not its content. It is this knowledge that I wish to communicate to the world, now that I recognize I will never know the message I originally set out to discover.
That spirituality is a fact can be demonstrated simply by my existence, that is, simply by existence itself. Anything, if it sits long enough, will meditate; and anything, once meditating, will progress toward a state of spirituality; and anything that lasts is, therefore, spiritual at least in some degree. I myself have outlasted usefulness, and my life has illustrated this theorem by gaining in spirituality what it has lost in meaningfulness. Its meaning has become its spirituality, a dangerous development that could lead to a further logical loss in spirituality, and consequently in meaning, and so on unto nothingness; but this nothingness would no doubt be the enlightenment I once felt so close I kissed its cheek with my eyelash.
However, enlightenment comes only once per life, if at all, and its retreat is final. In its wake is existence — precisely what I thought I might escape (the same thought that drove away its shadow, no doubt) — and in existence is bright light, incessant noise, insomnia.
Insomnia is forever, and it has lent me its permanence, with which I have gained said spirituality through endurance. And so I endure, awake, to tell you these thoughts, truths learned in a dream I had once fifty years ago and which frightened me so severely I have yet to sleep again.
A Parable
(My Wanderjahre)
They stole all my clothes, and so I stood naked in the department store, waiting for service. Commanded to sing, I could only remember fight songs from a college I never attended. They put rings on my fingers, and draped me in furs. I was forced to eat caviar with small portions of sour cream, or perhaps it was crème fraîche, I could not know having never tasted crème fraîche. It was announced in the newspapers that I was a child of kings. My feet were anointed, I have no idea with what. Incense was burning when I passed out near the altar. Coming to, I heard a choir of little boys. I was to eat only round foods: eggs, potatoes, oranges, beans. If I admired my furs, I was to roll in the mud. There was a flooded river, and I was swept away. Caught on a branch, I escaped the falls. The branch broke, but the river stood still. My furs dried without a stain. I walked to the top of the highest mountain.
The Argument
Is it that my memories have run out? Or is it the potential for creating memories that has been exhausted?
Or is memory an object, something given to you by another, outside the Museum of Natural History for example, on a cold day when there is no school?
Can these objects, once assimilated, become one’s own, or do they remain gifts from those we have forgotten? Does the giver of a gift disappear, his or her presence dissolved into the gift itself? Or is it the purpose of the gift that disappears?
What remains is not anyone, and not anything, but the sense of things given by someone forgotten. These are memories, and thus not knowing anyone or receiving anything brings a halt to their production.
The Image
The image enters your life in an unobtrusive manner, buries itself under the skin, and resurfaces at a moment of lightheartedness. But then it turns and burrows so deep it can no longer be seen, or, if seen, is unrecognizable. In a dream it reemerges: chimera-like, it is comprised of the many images with which it has since come into contact. Clinging to its edges, like seaweed, and to its surface like barnacles, are the strings and cankers of fear and anxiety. Its face is horrible. Its absorption is now complete, and irrevocable. You are made up of such images, you encounter new ones at a tremendous rate…
Poetry
Even if religion and song are the distillation of a people’s collective imagination, there are some things for which the individual alone must be responsible. And for these things there is no explanation. Why should Ganesh, whose elephant head I am willing to assign to the genius of a people, be greeted by an arrhythmic crash of cymbals whenever he enters the stage of the Ramayana play? This detail is too trivial for the imagination of an entire people. I must assign it instead to that lone percussionist, genius or imbecile, whose momentary success initiated a tradition. Surprise cannot emanate from a people, whose individual imaginations are calibrated to one another through myth and faith. The imagination may rule our waking and dreaming lives, but impulse — perhaps it is only impulse — remains the domain of personal irrationality. A religion or song based on irrationality would be incomprehensible, it would in no way mirror our imaginations, which are as orderly as they are fantastic. Fantasy is itself predictable and rigid, like those set entertainments through which we all suffered as children. Irrationality, by contrast, mirrors our individual souls. In it we recognize ourselves, but never our friends, relations, or neighbors — it therefore makes poor material for religions and songs — and is the only possible material for poetry.